Nicola, you've been right at least to the extent that I have been well inclined to take another glance at the ASL ;-) at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE
My comment did not reflect my intent to ask for any approach or specific legal "outfit" of the Apache Software in particular; it aimed at making developers aware (where my point made any sense at all and would be perceived as useful) of the following: do anything you consider right, but where considered useful by you inquire up to which degree of complexity users would be ready to study (and subject to) legal permissions. I wasn't aware that http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE contained any dispositions on sub-licences, but if their use is as easy as that of the ASL, no problem to me as a user; if my company felt instead that we had to go to a lawyer to be sure of our entitlements and obligations, we'd probably convinced ourselves that this was too much of an effort. In other terms: IMO, the legal dispositions of an open source software shouldn't be more complex than those of their commercial competitors. Matthias -----Original Message----- From: Nicola Ken Barozzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 3:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] FOP+iText = FOP-NG -next generation- (was: merging two libraries) From: Matthias Fischer > My company, for instance, would have to stop using FOP; > we would not even take the time to go into studying legal > aspects, because, as a medium-sized company, we > don't have the time and money and personnel to do this... I think you are exaggerating a bit. Are you using Apache license software? And did you study it with this scrutiny? If you are using the Apache license and are confortable with it, then there is no problem. If Apache can distribute it with APL code, you can do the same. It's simple as that. Apache admits only compatible licenses in the CVS for this reason; some weeks ago there has been a check in the CVS to check this, and you can be sure that there is zero tolerance on this issue, it is applied very strictly. Look at the descriptions on the main apache site and on Jakarta; there are very important pages IMO that explain as clearly as possible the position Apache has on this point. -- Nicola Ken Barozzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] - verba volant, scripta manent - (discussions get forgotten, just code remains) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
